Today, there are many different kinds of exercise equipment available to help you increase strength in your upper body. However, don’t fall into the hype that you’ll only see results if you invest in expensive equipment or a year’s gym subscription. There are several simple, easy exercises – including pushups – you can do at home that take advantage of your body’s weight and give you the results you’re looking for. This exercise remains one of the cheapest and most effective methods for building strength in your back, shoulders, and arms.

Toning Your Back

While pushups don’t increase the amount of weight on your back through the use of external weights, the muscles in your back will be gently toned as you work to keep it straight during the exercise. If you can’t keep your legs even with your back at first, you can bend your knees and do a modified push up to keep your back straight. This modified pushup will still help tone your back without causing injury. As your fitness level improves, you may want to go back to a more traditional form of pushup to increase the strength of your back.

Building Shoulder Strength

Pushups are well known for improving shoulder strength and mass. When you do pushups, you’re leveraging most of your body weight on your shoulders. Because the shoulders are working together, you’ll strenghten the muscles that cross your chest and upper back. In most cases – unless you’re interested in body building – pushups combined with other simple exercises should be enough for your everyday fitness routine. Even if you want to go beyond this level, pushups should always be a part of your home fitness routine.

Strengthening Your Arms

In addition to your shoulders, your upper arms and forearms also derive benefit from pushups. As you push your body up off the floor and lower it back down, the muscles in your arms are forced to expand and contract with the added resistance of the weight of your body. As you might expect, when your whole arm is involved in the exercise, you have a better chance of exercising each muscle group. If you do pushups on a regular basis, you may find that your arms will gain tone and muscle definition more quickly than with exercises that work only one group. And – perhaps best of all – you won’t have to spend any money on weights or other forms of equipment.

As with any other exercise, you should check with your doctor to make sure that it’s safe for you to do pushups. If you have shoulder, back, elbow, or wrist issues, you may want to make sure that these exercises will not add to your problems. When done properly and with safety in mind, pushups serve a vital role in toning and strengthening your back, upper body and arms. Without a question, they have served this vital purpose for millions of people in a way that is easy and cost effective.